When we suffer from a situation — and by “from”, I mean the suffering literally comes from the situation by way of oneself — we lose perspective and our concern constricts around the locus of pain, the self.
We forget that the suffering self is only a topical symptom of a situation.
If we escape the situation, the pain goes away. We might leave the situation to rot. Or we escape to a comfortable perch inside the situation but outside participation in the pain and comfortably contribute to advance the degradation of the whole.
*
A hand injects morphine into a painful gangrenous point on a leg and revels in its distance and comfort. And from that same distant comfort it admires its own benevolence. Perhaps the hand would be more urgent and thoughtful — and less offensive to the leg — if it understood “self” a little less stupidly? If it recognized its own substantial involvement in the pain? If it realized itself and the afflicted leg were joined at the torso and share a heart? If it were less inclined to indulge in pity?
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A person can be comfortable, or a person can be consequential, or a person can be neither.
What most of us want is that impossible fourth option, being comfortable and consequential. The expectation of comfortable consequentiality seduces us to having neither.
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A mirror is a machine which produces artificial space. The most artificial and most highly valued space it produces is that which stands between I and me.
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A dog seized some meat from the butcher shop and ran away with it until he came to a river. When the dog was crossing the river, he saw the reflection of the meat in the water, and it seemed much larger than the meat he was carrying. He dropped his own piece of meat in order to try to snatch at the reflection. When the reflection disappeared, the dog went to grab the meat he had dropped but he was not able to find it anywhere, since a passing raven had immediately snatched the meat and gobbled it up. The dog lamented his sorry condition and said, ‘Woe is me! I foolishly abandoned what I had in order to grab at a phantom, and thus I ended up losing both that phantom and what I had to begin with.’
*
At first glance, altruism seems beautiful and good.
At second glance, altruism becomes nonsensical.
But on even closer inspection, altruism turns out to be vile.
We cannot help but operate out of pure self-interest.
The real question is the depth and breadth of “your self”.
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A Christ incapable of spending a hellish night alone in Gethsemane and knowing God-forsakenness on the cross would not be able to speak from your heart. He would have to speak from beyond, like his Father.
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Next time you notice that a new mood has overcome you while interacting with someone, or when you notice that you converse easily with one person and are shut down by another, try a different interpretive mode. Experiment with saying: “I am now experiencing participation in a different, larger self which transcends I, but which involves I, and is felt by I as if it were I.”